Reasons to be encouraged about fiscal cliff's endgame — Now this is encouraging. I'm told that representatives of major unions and progressive groups met privately this morning with senior Obama administration officials at the White House — and were pleased with what they heard.

The other fiscal fight — President Barack Obama made a demand of House Speaker John Boehner near the end of their first White House meeting on the fiscal cliff: Raise the debt limit before year's end. — Boehner responded: “There is a price for everything.”

Tom Ricks: Fox News ‘is making it up’ — Author Tom Ricks on Tuesday said Fox News is “making it up” that he apologized after slamming the network during an on-air interview as “operating as a wing of the Republican Party” and hyping Benghazi for political reasons.

Harry Reid puts his finger on the ‘nuclear option’ button — So here's today's update in the slow, inexorable march towards filibuster reform: Democrats took yet another step in the direction of changing the rules by a simple majority vote — i.e., exercising the dreaded “nuclear option.”

RADIO'S LAURA INGRAHAM OFF THE AIR … NEW YORK (AP) — Radio talk show host Laura Ingraham is off the air - at least temporarily. — She said Tuesday that she's leaving her distributor, Talk Radio Network, after more than nine years because her contract is up.

Idaho lawmaker shares ‘last chance’ idea to elect Romney — A state senator from north-central Idaho is touting a scheme that's been circulating on tea party blogs, calling for states that supported Mitt Romney to refuse to participate in the Electoral College in a move backers believe would change the election result.

The Next Real Estate Boom — How housing (yes, housing) can turn the economy around. — hat if there were a new economic engine for the United States that would put our people back to work without putting the government deeper in debt? What if that economic engine also improved …

The Millennial Generation: Our Liberal Future — How doomed are conservatives? Pretty doomed, if you look carefully at the Pew Research Survey's close analysis of the youth vote in the 2012 elections. The Republicans' long-term dilemma has generally been framed in racial terms, but it's mainly a generational one.

Virginia Attorney General Suggests Obama Stole The Election … Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) told a radio host he completely agreed with her assertion that investigations are needed to determine why President Obama lost “every one” of the states with photo identification requirements for voting, yet won re-election.

Retirement watch: Will they stay or will they go? — The money game can also provide clues into senators' thinking — Cochran, Enzi, Idaho Sen. Jim Risch and Nebraska Sen. Mike Johanns each had less than $350,000 in their war chests through the end of the third quarter.

Alan Simpson hopes Grover Norquist drowns in bathtub — Former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wy.), one of the co-chairmen of the president's debt commission, joked Tuesday that he would like to see anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist drown in a bathtub. — The comment was a play on Norquist's famous statement …

About memeorandum:

The day's must-read political news and opinion pieces
are scattered across hundreds of news outlets and blogs,
too many for any one person to read.

Fortunately, memeorandum arranges all of these links in a single, easy-to-scan page. It auto-generates a news summary every 5 minutes, drawing on experts and pundits, insiders and outsiders, media professionals and amateur bloggers.